Pivotal London
Paid Search Lead
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Paid Search Lead
Fully Remote (London office optional) | Up to £60,000
I'm working with a fast-growing, consultancy-style performance marketing agency to find their next Paid Search Lead. They're not a traditional agency, they work as true consultants to some of the UK's most exciting high-growth DTC brands, working directly with founders and CMOs to help them break past the growth ceilings most brands hit. Not a service layer executing someone else's plan, they're in the room helping shape the plan.
The Role
They're looking for a Paid Search Lead who genuinely lives and breathes search, someone who thinks commercially, not just tactically, and who's confident challenging strategy rather than defaulting to platform recommendations.
This isn't a role for someone who wants to optimise campaigns against top-line ROAS and call it a day. They want someone who understands profitability at the product and margin level, who treats testing and incrementality as core to how they work rather than a nice-to-have, and who isn't afraid to push back, on the agency, on a client, on "best practice", when the data says something different.
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You'll work closely with founders and senior stakeholders, have real autonomy to experiment, and be expected to explain the why behind every recommendation, not just the what.
What You'll Do
- Own paid search strategy end-to-end for a portfolio of high-growth DTC brands
- Work directly with founders and CMOs to shape broader growth strategy, not just campaign performance
- Design and run incrementality and attribution testing to validate what's actually driving growth, not just what the platform reports
- Apply margin-aware thinking to bidding and budget decisions, understanding how a low-margin product might still drive strong volume while the real profit sits elsewhere in the customer journey
- Manage advanced feed, tracking and automation frameworks (Shopping, PMax, attribute mapping) to support scalable, profitable growth
- Challenge existing ways of working and introduce new approaches where the data supports it
- Collaborate closely with paid social, creative and wider growth functions to deliver full-funnel strategy
What They're Looking For
- Strong hands-on experience across Google Ads (Search, Shopping, PMax) at a strategic level
- Genuine experience with or fluency in profit-based measurement (POAS, margin bidding) and incrementality testing, not just familiarity with the terms
- A track record of working directly with founders, senior stakeholders or clients, ideally in a consultative capacity
- Experience with DTC or ecommerce brands specifically; bonus points for high-growth, founder-led environments
- Someone who asks why before how, and who's comfortable saying "I don't think that's right" when the evidence backs them up
- Curiosity, adaptability and a genuine interest in where performance marketing is heading
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What's On Offer
- Fully remote working, with a London office available if you want it
- Direct, meaningful access to the brands and people you're helping grow, not layers of account management between you and the decision-makers
- A culture that's entrepreneurial, collaborative and deliberately not cookie-cutter
- Salary up to £60,000, depending on experience
If this sounds like you, and you'd rather be a consultant than an order-taker, get in touch, I'd love to tell you more.
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